As presented in the What Did You Buy Today thread, I bought a Bridgeport milll from @mmcmdl
The serial number dates it to 1984, but it looks to me like it was used mostly for drilling holes and as a workbench. The flaking on the ways is still clear, and there’s no play in the table that I can detect, or that is commensurate with the dinged-up surface. The bucket full of chips that had built up in the knee were mostly drilling chips.
It was very dirty, which Dave attributed mostly to being in his unheated and dusty garage for too long. It would need cleaning, but only after getting it home.
Here it is after Dave and his son helped load it onto the tilt-bed trailer I rented for the move. We had to use Egyptian rollers to get it to move at all up that slope—a 12,000-pound winch wouldn’t budge it once it got onto the wood. Once in place, I screwed cleats to the deck and then used the lifting eye as an anchor for four heavy-load ratchet straps. Obviously, we inverted the head and raised the table to support it, which took a couple of feet off the height.
The 90-mile drive home was uneventful, which is rare given the route included the Baltimore beltway on a Friday.
I had arranged for a neighbor to bring his Bobcat with pallet forks, but we decided to use it and 40 feet of two straps to control it while we lowered it using 1” pipes as rollers. This turned out to be slow and careful. I have a wonderful Johnson bar with a 5-foot handle that could easily tilt it up enough to place the rollers. Fortunately it cleared the 7-foot door with the head inverted.
And that’s how we moved it into position.
It took three cans of brake cleaner, three cans of WD40 Degreaser, and two rolls of paper towels to get at least most of the grime off of it. It’s still stained from old oil but it’s not crusty or grimy.
I spent a lot of time on the table, even to the point of draw-filing some of the worst bits, but got it to the point where precision-ground flat stones were able to make 30 or 40 points per square inch shiny.
I disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the Kurt D60 that was part of the purchase, removing a metric buttload of crusty grime filled with chips. I stoned those surfaces, too. Later, when I trammed the mill, once the head was adjusted to the table using a back-plunge indicator on a 4” arm mounted in a collet, I swept the vise jaws. It was perfect within a couple of tenths, consistent with where I pronounced the tram acceptable.
The vise is obviously older but it still cleaned up nicely.
Once the mill was clean enough to use (I’m a mechanic not a restorer), I started on the wiring. The motor was wired for 440, which required a phone call to Dave to confirm the possibility to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I rewired it in the peckerhead for 220, and then wired a plug on the cord to plug into the twist-lock 3-phase receptacle I had installed on the RPC. No smoke was released and it jumped to life. The RPC is a floor model that sits next to the mill.
I spent time with the powerfeed for the quill that didn’t seem right. The power feed speed control knob was broken off, but it also would not go into .006/rev and there was no speed change switching between .003 and .0015. I pulled the selector and the plate, and the cam that shifts the gears in the powerfeed transmission was broken. That’s easy to fix and a new one is on order from H&W. I ordered new felts at the same time. I also found some way covers on eBay that are on the way.
And the manual fine-feed hand wheel was missing and I was set make a bushing to adapt the one Dave provided that is a little too large. But I found an original online for less that what the bushing material would cost and it’s on the way.
And the clutch pop off was dirty and sticky so I gave that a thorough cleaning.
With that sorted, I installed a Shars quill DRO. I’m not thrilled with that so far—it measures a 4” gauge block as 3.994” and it can’t be calibrated.
Speaking of calibration, I recalibrated the Mitutoyo DRO that was on the mill and it’s now perfect. But it’s an old DRO with few features. I’ll have to do my own math.
Spindle runout was 0.0002” on a gauge pin in a collet.
Look at that flaking!
Next to rebuild is the Ralmike’s super spacer, which looks to have been made by Kalamazoo.
Rick “nearly ready to make some chips” Denney
The serial number dates it to 1984, but it looks to me like it was used mostly for drilling holes and as a workbench. The flaking on the ways is still clear, and there’s no play in the table that I can detect, or that is commensurate with the dinged-up surface. The bucket full of chips that had built up in the knee were mostly drilling chips.
It was very dirty, which Dave attributed mostly to being in his unheated and dusty garage for too long. It would need cleaning, but only after getting it home.
Here it is after Dave and his son helped load it onto the tilt-bed trailer I rented for the move. We had to use Egyptian rollers to get it to move at all up that slope—a 12,000-pound winch wouldn’t budge it once it got onto the wood. Once in place, I screwed cleats to the deck and then used the lifting eye as an anchor for four heavy-load ratchet straps. Obviously, we inverted the head and raised the table to support it, which took a couple of feet off the height.
The 90-mile drive home was uneventful, which is rare given the route included the Baltimore beltway on a Friday.
I had arranged for a neighbor to bring his Bobcat with pallet forks, but we decided to use it and 40 feet of two straps to control it while we lowered it using 1” pipes as rollers. This turned out to be slow and careful. I have a wonderful Johnson bar with a 5-foot handle that could easily tilt it up enough to place the rollers. Fortunately it cleared the 7-foot door with the head inverted.
And that’s how we moved it into position.
It took three cans of brake cleaner, three cans of WD40 Degreaser, and two rolls of paper towels to get at least most of the grime off of it. It’s still stained from old oil but it’s not crusty or grimy.
I spent a lot of time on the table, even to the point of draw-filing some of the worst bits, but got it to the point where precision-ground flat stones were able to make 30 or 40 points per square inch shiny.
I disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the Kurt D60 that was part of the purchase, removing a metric buttload of crusty grime filled with chips. I stoned those surfaces, too. Later, when I trammed the mill, once the head was adjusted to the table using a back-plunge indicator on a 4” arm mounted in a collet, I swept the vise jaws. It was perfect within a couple of tenths, consistent with where I pronounced the tram acceptable.
The vise is obviously older but it still cleaned up nicely.
Once the mill was clean enough to use (I’m a mechanic not a restorer), I started on the wiring. The motor was wired for 440, which required a phone call to Dave to confirm the possibility to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I rewired it in the peckerhead for 220, and then wired a plug on the cord to plug into the twist-lock 3-phase receptacle I had installed on the RPC. No smoke was released and it jumped to life. The RPC is a floor model that sits next to the mill.
I spent time with the powerfeed for the quill that didn’t seem right. The power feed speed control knob was broken off, but it also would not go into .006/rev and there was no speed change switching between .003 and .0015. I pulled the selector and the plate, and the cam that shifts the gears in the powerfeed transmission was broken. That’s easy to fix and a new one is on order from H&W. I ordered new felts at the same time. I also found some way covers on eBay that are on the way.
And the manual fine-feed hand wheel was missing and I was set make a bushing to adapt the one Dave provided that is a little too large. But I found an original online for less that what the bushing material would cost and it’s on the way.
And the clutch pop off was dirty and sticky so I gave that a thorough cleaning.
With that sorted, I installed a Shars quill DRO. I’m not thrilled with that so far—it measures a 4” gauge block as 3.994” and it can’t be calibrated.
Speaking of calibration, I recalibrated the Mitutoyo DRO that was on the mill and it’s now perfect. But it’s an old DRO with few features. I’ll have to do my own math.
Spindle runout was 0.0002” on a gauge pin in a collet.
Look at that flaking!
Next to rebuild is the Ralmike’s super spacer, which looks to have been made by Kalamazoo.
Rick “nearly ready to make some chips” Denney
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